How did you get involved with LOTR book?

[Imran Siddiqui]

And a better speller .

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

they're nearly entirely superfluous to the telling of the story.

Of course they aren't! They show the power of the Fellowship, where an elf and dwarf, two members of antognistic races work together and become close friends. Its part of the main story that the evil of Sauron brings all sort of people together.

u might wna jump off my **** there a lil boy.

Now if you spoke English, I may be able to understand this another note better .

I would have been happy if they were gone. they are like when u stick a black guy a female and a white guy in a picture to prove u aren't racist.

they weren't needed in the story.

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
i have a feeling imran's a bit older than you, yavoon.

and....?

yah thats what I thought, u huge dumbass.

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And a better speller .

weak and feeble minded individuals nitpick when the functionality is not compromised.

[Verto]

What a naughty turn this thread has taken.

[Pekka]

Yeah, please keep the argument on nice levels... I'd like to know more stories about how people got involved, and if it gets to flaming, then people don't easily contribute anymore.. keep on arguing though.

[JohnT]

David Brin isn't a big fan either... http://www.davidbrin.com/tolkienarticle1.html


A few quotes:

This fits the very plot of Lord of the Rings, in which the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as they can of an older, graceful and 'natural' hierarchy, against the disturbing, quasi-industrial and vaguely technological ambience of Mordor, with its smokestack imagery and manufactured power-rings that can be used by anybody, not just an elite few. (Recall the scene where Saruman turns away from the 'good' side and immediately starts ripping up trees, replacing them with mining pits and smoky forges. The anti-industrial imagery could not be more explicit.)

Let's not ignore, but instead openly acknowledge the underlying racialism and belief in an inherent aristocracy that J.R.R. Tolkien weaved into the books, without even much attempt at subtlety. Nor do I much blame him. He couldn't help it, coming from the imperialist and class-ridden culture that raised him. One that worried deeply about how "uppity" the masses were starting to become.

Try as he might, and even confronted with the blatant romantic excesses of Nazism, Tolkien could not escape his own deep conviction that democratic enlightenment and modernity made up the greater evil. That hated trend, he feared, would ruin all the beauty that he found in tradition. In aristocratic-mystical hierarchies. In the ways of the past.

Now ponder something that comes through even the party-line demonization of a crushed enemy. This clearcut and undeniable fact. Sauron's army was the one that included every species and race on Middle Earth, including all the despised colors of humanity, and all the lower classes.

Hm. Did they all leave their homes and march to war thinking "Oh, goody, let's go serve an evil dark lord"?

Or might they instead have thought they were the 'good guys', with a justifiable grievance worth fighting for, rebelling against an ancient, rigid, pyramid-shaped, feudal hierarchy topped by invader-alien elves and their Numenorean colonialist human lackeys?

Picture, for a moment, Sauron the Eternal Rebel, relentlessly maligned by the victors of the Ring War -- the royalists who control the bards and scribes (and movie-makers). Sauron, champion of the common Middle-Earther! Vanquished but still revered by the innumerable poor and oppressed who sit in their squalid huts, wary of the royal secret police with their magical spy-eyes, yet continuing to whisper stories, secretly dreaming and hoping that someday he will return... bringing more rings.

[Imran Siddiqui]

weak and feeble minded individuals nitpick when the functionality is not compromised.

Very good... did you run that through Word's spell check? That is the language we 'feeble minded' refer to as English.

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

weak and feeble minded individuals nitpick when the functionality is not compromised.

Very good... did you run that through Word's spell check? That is the language we 'feeble minded' refer to as English.

yes cause when I misspell you as u its obviously cuz I have no concept of how to spell you.

I was unaware they made ppl as stupid as u.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You, not 'u'.. You

And you did so well in that prior sentance. I guess we'll have to teach you more.

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
You, not 'u'.. You

And you did so well in that prior sentance. I guess we'll have to teach you more.

sorry, if u lack the intellectual capacity to handle "u" and "w/" then maybe u shouldn't be allowed near sharp objects either.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Someone who says 'u' instead of 'you' talking about 'intellectual capacity' . Rich! Tell us another one, yavoon. Tell us another!

[yavoon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Someone who says 'u' instead of 'you' talking about 'intellectual capacity' . Rich! Tell us another one, yavoon. Tell us another!

yes because intellect is inversely proportional to the use of shorthand.

ur just going to get pounded man. give it up. shorthand isn't going anywhere. so u might as well just live w/ it.

I feel kinda bad for u. stuck in a horrible position of having to oppose the use of shorthand just because of ur irrational and rabbid hatred for me?

[Verto]

Stop threadjacking. This is one of the few threads in OT with potential!

[Bosh]

My father read the Hobbit to me when I was six and then I went and read it myself in 3rd grade and the LoTRs in 4th. Lot of good stuff in all of them, but Tolkien is hardly a great story-teller and a lot of the points that Brin makes about Tolkien's romanticism and anti-enlightenment stance are spot-on...